More to
Trump surge in Pennsylvania than just Cruz-Kasich misstep, by Robert Romano
The polls were all wrong in
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware.
The Real Clear Politics average of
polls in Pennsylvania leading up to Tuesday’s Republican primary for
president had
Donald Trump up 48 percent to 27 percent.
Instead, he won 58 percent to 22 percent.
In Maryland, the
average of the in the primary had Trump up 47 percent to 26 percent. Instead, he won 56 percent to 23 percent.
In Connecticut, the
polls said Trump was at 54 percent, but
then he over performed again at 59 percent.
Trump had similarly over performed
in New York a week earlier. The
polls had said he would get 53 percent, but
he got 60 percent of the vote there. That, after a miserable few weeks with
consecutive losses in North Dakota, Wisconsin and Colorado.
New York helped the campaign reclaim
momentum headed into a series of northeast states that favored Trump, and where
his blue collar economic message against unbridled trade and immigration played
heavily.
So what went wrong for challengers
Ted Cruz and John Kasich? Why were Trump’s victories even more decisive than
the polls were able to show even days before the votes took place?
One potential flashpoint for Trump’s
resurgence was the
outcome of the Colorado caucus,
where Cruz secured all of the state’s delegates at the state convention. Trump
called the process “rigged” in an op-ed by the Wall Street Journal, taking the theme on the campaign trail in a message that
has clearly resonated. In essence, 100 percent of the delegates was a banana
republic type of outcome. The state GOP did not even try to make it look good
by awarding a few token delegates to Trump.
Fair or not, Trump successfully
portrayed a state convention awarding all of a state’s delegates to a candidate
as illegitimate, while a state primary doing the same thing, such as in Florida
or South Carolina, where he won all of the delegates but not all of the votes,
was perfectly fine. Making that stick was a political masterstroke at a time
many worried the Trump campaign was imploding.
Then, adding fuel to the fire, ahead
of Tuesday’s primaries the Cruz and Kasich campaigns officially agreed to divvy
up remaining primary states in a
desperate bid to stop Trump. In effect, Kasich suspended his
campaign in Indiana while Cruz suspended his in Oregon and New Mexico — an
unusual move by both campaigns that was bound to dispirit supporters in the
states that are being sacrificed and beyond. Now Cruz and Kasich supporters in
these states are being asked to support a candidate who might not even be their
second choice.
The cooperation by Cruz and Kasich
broke the illusion of the campaign, and may have violated voters’ sense of fair
play. Aren’t the candidates supposed to be running against each other? Cruz and
Kasich were no longer asking their supporters to vote for them as candidates on
the ballot, they were asking them to vote against Trump.
It provided ample evidence that Cruz
and Kasich — both who were mathematically eliminated from winning the
nomination outright after the April 19 primary in New York — intend to play a
Cleveland convention strategy to win. Which, being their only shot at the
nomination, is not necessarily surprising.
Prior to 1976, contested and
brokered conventions were basically the norm of Republican presidential
politics, when most states neither held primaries nor caucuses. Voters had
little to no role in actually selecting the party’s nominee. The national
convention did. But for Cruz and Kasich to get there, they need to stop Trump
from getting enough delegates to win on the first ballot at the convention.
Splitting their votes in key states probably wasn’t helping.
But whatever the merits of that
strategy, it has almost certainly played into the Trump campaign’s narrative
that his opponents intend to disenfranchise Republican voters by wresting the
nomination from the frontrunner at the convention and giving it to a candidate
with far fewer votes, or none at all.
All of which might help explain
Trump’s sudden surge at the ballot box, as many Cruz and Kasich supporters
either switched to Trump or simply stayed home, a capitulation that would have
surely boosted Trump’s percentages. Now, all eyes turn to Indiana, where the
Cruz-Kasich strategy will face its first test. If it backfires, and Kasich’s
supporters wind up still voting for Kasich, voting for Trump or simply staying
home, this contest could be all but over.
But all of that is inside baseball,
just the day-to-day bustle of the campaign. The Cruz-Kasich misstep analysis
ignores other more pervasive factors, including Trump himself and more
specifically the new voters he has brought the table. Take Pennsylvania, a state where
particularly his message on trade would resonate. Both were closed primaries. There, Trump
secured 892,000 votes, 57 percent of the GOP’s 1.5 million vote total. Hillary
Clinton only got 918,000, 56 percent of
the Democrats’ 1.6 million votes.
In 2008, only 815,000 voted in the
entire GOP contest in Pennsylvania, while 2.3 million voted Democrats in their
primary. Now, Democrat turnout in the
Pennsylvania primary dropped 29 percent from 2008 by about 700,000, while
Republican turnout increased 89 percent by more than 700,000.
It would take a whole lot more than
voter frustration over the rules of the Republican presidential nominating process
to realign a state like Pennsylvania so dramatically.
Pennsylvania is very clearly in play
in the general election. The turnout numbers have to be worrisome for Democrat
brass.
Below the topline percent numbers
there is a dramatic shift occurring politically in states like Pennsylvania and
elsewhere — and Trump and the economic issues he is raising are most certainly
the reason. Pay attention, this is important.
Robert
Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.
http://netrightdaily.com/2016/04/trump-surge-pennsylvania-just-cruz-kasich-misstep/
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